Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 17, 2025
The temperate struggles of the patricians and plebeians had finally established the firm and equal balance of the constitution; which united the freedom of popular assemblies, with the authority and wisdom of a senate, and the executive powers of a regal magistrate.
The hypothesis that legally the full -imperium- belonged to the patrician, and only the military -imperium- to the plebeian, consular tribunes, not only provokes various questions to which there is no answer as to the course followed, for example, in the event of the election falling, as was by law quite possible, wholly on plebeians but specially conflicts with the fundamental principle of Roman constitutional law, that the -imperium-, that is to say, the right of commanding the burgess in name of the community, was functionally indivisible and capable of no other limitation at all than a territorial one.
The censors were designed at first merely to preside over the taking of the census, but they afterwards obtained the power of punishing, by a deprivation of civil rights, those who were guilty of any flagrant immorality. The patricians retained exclusive possession of the censorship, long after the consulship had been opened to the plebeians.
Thus it is that the Revolution has become a date in the human mind, and not merely an event in the history of the people. The men of the Constituent Assembly were not Frenchmen, they were universal men. We mistake, we vilify them when we consider them only as priests, aristocrats, plebeians, faithful subjects, malcontents or demagogues.
There was, for a considerable time, a dispute whether plebeians should be admitted among them: at length the point was conceded to the patricians, provided that the Icilian law regarding the Aventine and the other devoting laws were not repealed.
It is clear from this very passage that among the Celts no such servile class existed as among the Romans and other nations of antiquity. The plebeians, as Caesar calls them, that is to say, the simple clansmen, held no office in the state, were not summoned to the councils of the nation, and, on that account, were nobodies in the opinion of the writer.
They walked about La Grenonillère establishment with stately steps like queens; and seemed to glory in their fame, rejoicing in the gaze that was fixed on them, so superior to this crowd, to this mob, to these plebeians. Madeleine and her lover watched them approach and in the girl's eyes a fire lightened. When the two first had reached the end of the table, Madeleine cried: "Pauline!"
This was the commencement of the power of the plebs, which was seen with great jealousy by the patricians. All free citizens, whether patricians or plebeians, were called to defend the State, and were enrolled in the army. The equites, or cavalry, took the precedence in the army, and was composed of the wealthy citizens.
The rest, if there were any, generally followed the career of arms, and remained unmarried; for heiresses of noble birth were few, and their guardians married them to eldest sons of great houses whenever possible, while the strength of caste prejudice made alliances of nobles with the daughters of rich plebeians extremely unusual.
The strife between the patricians and the plebeians now began, and lasted two centuries before the latter were admitted to a full equality of civil rights. The cause of the conflict, it would appear, was the unequal and burdensome taxation to which the plebeians were subjected, and especially vexations from the devastations which war produced.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking